At my house there are four TV shows we never miss: MAD MEN, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, WHALE WARS and JEOPARDY. The other night Alex Trebeck said, “A wild west hero, a friend of Wyatt Earp, he was nowhere near the O.K. Corral — he did, however, gain fame at the Gunfight at Dodge City.”

Without even thinking, a contestant buzzed in and answered, “Who was Bat Masterson?”

Later the contestant admitted she had no idea from what part of her anatomy the name had been extracted, but she was right. Her first thought had been Doc Holliday, but luckily she couldn’t remember his first name. Was it Doc or Don? No matter; it was just one of those magic moments: Bat Masterson was the correct response.

The point is, hardly anyone knows anything about Bat Masterson — the man or the myth (and we don't remember much of Gene Barry's TV show of many years ago, either, on which, in nearly 200 episodes, he portrayed the dapper lawman, gambler, hunter and gunslinger.)

I, however, being an aficionado of American history, know a great deal about both of them. I thought you might be interested.

Bat Masterson, excellent shot that he was, was not even wounded at the Dodge City shootout, where he’d gone to defend his younger brother, the local sheriff who had been threatened. Bat did not shuffle off his mortal coil until age 67 on October 25, 1921, while living and working as a newspaperman in New York City.

He was typing his final article for the New York Morning Telegraph, where he’d become something of a journeyman sports editor and columnist, when he suddenly grabbed his chest and keeled over at his desk; a massive heart attack did him in.

He was buried after a simple service (which only a handful attended) in the Bronx; true, he was a popular writer, but he was always a bit of a loner and claimed few friends. Although baptized ‘Bartholomew,’ the name he went by was William Barclay Masterson, and it appears above this curious epitaph on his tombstone: “Loved by Everyone. 1853-1921”

I mention it because I recently ran across some of his old columns while I was looking up something else. Liberally edited, the thought occurred to me he might have been writing about the current “Debit Deal Darlings” in Washington.

"Every [congressman], we are told, has his day, unless there are more [congressmen] than [constituents.]"

“[America, as a whole,] is the biggest boomtown there is. They will buy any damned thing over here."

"When a man is [paying is his taxes] he roars longer and louder over the twenty-five cents he loses through the hole in the bottom of his pocket than he does over what he loses through the hole in the top."

"There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a [country] of ours. I suppose the ginks who argue that way hold that because if the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter, things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I can't see it that way. The way I see it . . .”

Those were Masterson's last written words, which were on the sheet found in the carriage of the typewriter on his desk. Had he lived a bit longer he might have finished that final column thusly:

“The way I see it . . .” [the rich get richer and the poor get children. People work hard to get elected to Congress so they can ride the trolley for free, while the rest of us tote that barge and lift that bale so the freeloaders can all keep warm and grow old in comfort. Our government was never set up ‘by the people, for the people.’ It was set up by congressmen, for congressman. You want to be a third-class citizen? It’s easy. Just make sure you don’t get elected to public office — especially to the United States Congress.]

[Is America the greatest country on earth? You bet. Does it matter to you and me if our credit rating is triple A, or double? Only if you’re a Wall Street broker. Or a mega-monster-bank banker.]